Konstantin Zamyatin (Helsinki)
Abstract
In the early 1990s the revival of titular languages was set as one of the goals of lan- guage policies in the national republics of Russia. The republican authorities intended to achieve this policy goal through designating the titular languages with an official status on par with Russian and the corresponding expansion of their use in the public domains by institutionalizing elements of official status in legislation. The extent of institutionalization of titular languages varied across the republics and depended on the level of representation of ethnic elites in regional parliaments. Did the extent of implementation correlate with that of institutionalization? How important was partici- pation of elites in decision-making for the successful implementation? To what extent were the institutionalized elements also implemented? The purpose of this paper is to compare the extent and content of institutional support provided to titular languages in the republics in order to understand the limits in the ability of ethnic elites to pro- mote the titular languages. Today, after more than two decades of implementation, the policy effectiveness can be already evaluated. The policies were implemented through executive programs. The approach of this study is to examine executive programs in the republics titled after the ‘peoples’ speaking Finno-Ugric languages with the help of some qualitative and quantitative criteria. The comparison demonstrates that the official status of titular languages achieved in the early 1990s did not automatically open the access to their institutional support. Ethnic elites steadily had to bargain for funding for policy implementation. Insufficient support does not ensure language maintenance. Keywords: Language revival, executive programs, decision-making, policy implemen- tation, Finno-Ugric republics, Russian Federation
1. Introduction
Institutionalization of languages implies the introduction of a language in cer- tain institutional contexts (see Zamyatin 2014c). Institutionalization of titular languages in legislation marked commitment of authorities to the expansion of their official use. However, in the top-down policy approach towards promotion of the titular languages, legal provisions rarely required their compulsory use
in practice and, instead, left to decide over practical issue to the discretion of bureaucracy. In this situation, policy implementation mattered more for achiev- ing the policy goal than legislation. What determined the extent and content of support directed at ‘maintenance and development’ of titular languages? It would be logical to expect that the access of elites to power mattered also at the stage of policy implementation. The purpose of the current article is to check the hypothesis that participation of ethnic elites in decision-making was the key variable for providing institutional support at the level of policy implementation. In order to achieve this aim, the first objective is based on previous research to explore the link between participation in decision-making and support for language revival. The second objective is to outline the institutional framework for policy implementation and limitations it imposed on the forms of support. The third objective is to test the hypothesis by studying the content and mea- suring the extent of support in case studies. The fourth objective is to provide a perspective for evaluation of policy’s possible implications.
This study will start with exploring in its first part the reasons for and cir- cumstances of the attachment of language revival to the officialization of titular languages and the role of elites in this process. From a federal perspective, the study will utilize the findings regarding the limits imposed by the federal policy and its shifts that conditioned the dynamics in the policy adoption and its changes in regional language legislation (Zamyatin 2014b). From a regional perspective, it will address the problem of minority access to power through ethnic political representation and participation in decision-making. Fernand de Varennes wrote about the political, administrative and legal mechanisms needed for the policy of official bilingualism to be effective (see de Varennes 2012: 47-51). Accordingly, the second part will outline the main resources in these three fields both in their horizontal and vertical power dimensions needed for the expansion of the use of titular language. This part will describe the ‘hardware’ of institutions that had to back the policy and the ‘software’ of regulations, of which executive programs became the most important mech- anism in defining the extent and content of support and providing financial resources for policy implementation.
If the policy adoption was a non-recurrent step (in fact, three steps: see Zamyatin 2014a: 97-103), then the stage of implementation is a protracted in time activity. For that reason, the implementation will be studied from a dia- chronic perspective. Furthermore, to exclude historically contingent factors, the study will undertake a comparison of policy implementation in several republics. So, in the third part of the article a comparative analysis of execu- tive programs will shed light on the extent and content of support provided in the Republics of Karelia (RK), Komi (KR), Mari El (RME), Mordovia (RM), Udmurtia (UR). The programs are the primary data to be analyzed. While the
texts of the programs are available, the data on their implementation is less so. The situation has somewhat improved in the late 2000s, when authorities were obliged to make their policies more open and accountable to the public. When available, also reports on activities of executive authorities and some other official sources are used among the research materials.
Regarding the content of support, the paper will explore, what was the scope of executive programs, whether a program was focused on state languages or had a wider application and, further, whether a program was focused more on status planning, corpus planning or prestige planning. Regarding the extent of support, the paper will explore how intensive were measures by comparing the amount of funds provided. In order to see how the extent and content of support changed over time, the paper will study all programs directed at ‘main- tenance and development’ of languages approved in these republics since the early 1990 but it will only briefly present the latest cycle of programs of the early 2010s. A limitation of the paper is that it will not explore the programs in conjoined spheres, notably, in culture and education, that also contained some measures on language promotion. Another limitation is that this study will not explore separately the circumstances and political background behind the programs’ approval. When applicable, the study will draw upon the parallels with the adoption of the language laws (Zamyatin 2013c; see paragraph 4.3 below). Furthermore, analysis is restricted to studying language planning and does explore neither its impact on language practices nor the influence of the sociolinguistic situation on policy.
Finally, in the fourth part, the obtained data on implementation will be put in an evaluative perspective. First the problem of evaluation will be discussed and then the extent and content of programs evaluated. The evaluation of the data is conducted not on an absolute but on a relative account, inter alia, against the background of the republics with greater amount of support. The Republics of Tatarstan (RT) and Chuvashia (ChR) serve as a frame of reference, against which to measure what could have been done also in the Finno-Ugric republics. The results demonstrate that, after all, the implementation was not as bleak as could be expected from the low institutionalization. The content of support was quite manifold, although the official status of state languages per se was not especially useful to significantly increase the extent of support at the stage of implementation. Ethnic elites were co-optated into executive authorities and were in control of executive programs but not of providing funds. As a result, the extent of support provided in executive programs does not guarantee language maintenance in the long run.
2. Language policy and the role of elites in its implementation 2.1. ‘Top-down’ language revival policy and the role of elites in its adoption
The processes of decrease in linguistic diversity inspired a recent wave of research in language revitalization. Sophisticated accounts, such as the model of reversing language shift (Fishman 1991), emerged that propose tools for dealing with language shift and are successfully utilized in some revitalization projects. Joshua Fishman (2001) pointed out that efforts both ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ are necessary for the reversal of language shift to be successful. While researchers now quite well understand the mechanics of language shift at the micro level and propose their solutions through grass-root activities, less studied is the situation of language endangerment at the macro level in commu- nities with hundreds of thousands of speakers, who, nevertheless, rapidly lose their language. Researchers agree that the problem might be in the language policy of the state that promotes national identity, for which strong regional languages might become an obstacle. However, researchers have not yet quite found answers for the situation, when the despite the explicit commitment of public authorities to preserving diversity and multilingualism, the minority languages continue to quickly disappear, as is the case in post-Soviet Russia. Whether the reason for the failure of the revivalist attempts is inefficiency of the policy or are there some other explanations?
An appropriate approach to the study of language policy of the state that can shed light on the problem of policy efficiency is the policy analysis that explores the political process developing in a sequence of stages (see Zamy- atin 2014a: 46). According to Bernard Spolsky (2004: 5–15) language policy is comprised of three components: language practices, language ideology and language planning, where the latter amounts to a set of actions by public au- thorities. In a diachronic perspective, language planning undergoes the stages of policy adoption, its implementation and evaluation (see, e.g., Grin 2003: 47). In a synchronic perspective, the three types of language planning: acquisition planning, status planning and prestige planning (see Cooper 1990: 100-103) include, accordingly, to actions directed at creating capacity, opportunity and desire to use the language in François Grin’s C-O-D model.
The policy analysis approach is suitable for a case study of Russia’s national republics because of the state-centered character of language politics there. On the wave of popular ethnic mobilization in the late 1980s, the language shift among non-Russians to the Russian language appeared among the popular con- cerns in the Autonomous Republics of the Russian SFSR and the demand for ‘language revival’ was pronounced. A possible fix would have been addressing the problem of broken intergenerational language transmission in family through
grass-root activities. Yet, the leadership of national movements identified the absence of non-Russian languages in the public sphere as another cause of language shift and ethnic assimilation that could be tackled with only through the public policy. At the same time, the public policy directed at reversal of language shift had to be restricted to the public sphere. Free choice of lan- guage use was recognized that precluded state interference in private affairs of individuals. This way top-down language policy in the national republics of Russia became the mainstream approach to solving the problem of language shift and language loss (see Zamyatin 2014b: 109).
The goal of the expansion of language use in the public sphere could be achieved through status planning, that is, the designation of certain languag- es with an official status. In the early 1990s almost all former Autonomous Republics of Russia established Russian and titular languages as their state languages first in the declarations of state sovereignty and later in the consti- tutions. The officialization of the titular languages opened the gate both for the expansion of their practical functions in office and, wider, for systemic preferential support for their ‘maintenance and development’ through a set of regional government actions (see Zamyatin 2014a: 103-104). While the offici- alization was a measure of status planning, ‘maintenance and development’ of languages included measures of corpus planning and acquisition planning and was not restricted to officialized languages. In ideological terms, ‘maintenance and development’ of languages does not imply a qualitative change but rather a process of ‘language promotion’ and, thus, is unpretentious in comparison with popularly demanded ‘language revival’, which supposes the result (see Zamyatin 2013c: 140). Furthermore, the adherence to promoting the official use of titular languages instead of requiring its use by authorities also reveals intention to further limit the official use of titular languages to a more symbolic role instead of actually achieving a state of official bilingualism (de Varennes 2012: 52-56). This also means that even if some republics established status languages as equal in their status, de facto unequal functioning of languages is taken as a starting point. Why was the policy goal formulated so restrictively from a revivalist perspective?
While the republican authorities officially used public demands as justifi- cation for the official designation of languages, meaningful is the distinction between popular ethnic mobilization and the activities of authorities especially in those republics where the public demands have only partially become the government agenda. Furthermore, in the conditions of the turn to authoritar- ianism, the instrumental interests of elites became an intrinsic part in their motivation behind the demands for officialization. The different segments of regional elites that were advancing their interests by this act of officialization are referred here as ‘(titular) ethnic elites’ and ‘Russian elites’. Given high
politicization of ethnicity, ethnic origin of government officials and other mem- bers of elites often mattered in search for political compromises over ethnic and linguistic issues (see further discussion on different segments of elites in Zamyatin 2014a: 60-64).
All the republics adopted the revival of titular languages though their of- ficial designation as a goal of their policies, even if in terms of the process of promotion and not the require result. This outcome is somewhat unanticipated, because the expansion of titular languages in the public sphere was not in the interest of the Russian elites and in the republics with the Russian majority they could have prevented this step. Jan Blommaert conceptualized political attitudes propagating the need for reducing multilingualism as those based on ‘the efficiency assumption’ and ‘the integration assumption’ (Blommaert 1996: 210–212). Applying these assumptions specifically towards the situation with co-official languages, the arguments against the designation of two and more official languages would go that this step makes governance ‘unworkable’ and would further inspire nationalist political aspirations by creating an insti- tutionalized obstacle to national unity. In fact, neither arguments about costs and benefits nor about equality, justice and rights (see, e.g., Kymlicka 1995, Grin 2003) have become central but the issue of power. Both titular and Rus- sian regional elites had a common interest in establishing the state languages in the sovereignty declarations as one more attribute of the national statehood that could serve as an argument for a greater self-governance in the face of central authorities also in republics with a Russian majority (see Zamyatin 2013a: 151-153).
At the same time, titular ethnic elites attempted to use language requirements for top officials in regional politics as a political instrument. Russian regional elites resisted inclusion in the republican constitutions of this and some other provisions that stipulated practical use of titular languages. In reaching an agreement with titular ethnic elites, the Russian regional elites insisted on a number of conditions that made impossible the use of official status as an instru- ment of exclusion in the republics, where titular groups were in the numerical minority (Zamyatin 2013b: 369-371). The conditions included a co-official status of Russian and the disconnection between symbolic recognition of the official status and practical expansion of titular languages in the public sphere. Alexander Osipov studied the workings of ethnic federalism in Russia and demonstrated how conflict of interests ends up in the situations of ‘systemic hypocrisy’, when the political actors contend with symbolic recognition and do not reach the actual implementation of legal provisions (Osipov 2012). Hypocrisy in the given case meant that the scope of the official status remained undefined. State languages were only symbolically designated in sovereignty